With currently ~24,000 journals, do we really need another one? - Björn Brembs

There are 24,000 structural biology journals? - Iddo Friedberg

I think Bjorn's point is that why do you need a separate journal (which would cost probably $100ks to set up and put back PLoS reaching break even by 6-12 months maybe). What is wrong with sending to PLoS Biology and/or PLoS ONE? Or to put it another way, what purpose does a separate journal actually serve? - Cameron Neylon

@Cameron: a community for a defined scientific field. Currently, there is no publication venue that is both high impact and Open Access. If your structural biology paper is not a huge breakthrough (not for PB), yet is novel (would like something other than P1), your choices are closed access journal like Structure / Proteins Science / Proteins/ JMB - Iddo Friedberg

But do journals really have communities any more? If you want a community hub then why not aggregate selected content back from OA journals? Not trying to be combattive, just interested in the desires. And if there are other ways of satisfying them. My personal view is that creating a new journal for anything simply isn't worth the time and effort and unless it is the best way of offering something entirely new. - Cameron Neylon

@Cameron: The new thing would be an OA for the structural biology community. Just like there is one for computational biology, and one for genetics, and one for general breakthrough in life sciences. Currently, anything that is short of breakthrough structural biology papers that are of general interest (PB material) does not have an open access venue.Structural biologists are not short of closed access venues, I'm just thinking there should be a good OA one. - Iddo Friedberg

"If you want a community hub then why not aggregate selected content back from OA journals?" -- Putting it another way: because there is no OA venue for structural biology papers to start off with. Kind of a chicken and egg thing. And yes, journals do have communities. Most of life scientists publish in Closed Access journals mainly for that reason. - Iddo Friedberg

Is there a society for structural biology? BMC offers deals to host journals for scholarly societies, and there's always Open Journal Systems (http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs). - Bill Hooker

@Bill the protein society that published Protein Science (Wiley-Blackwell) is the largest one. Not sure what their motivation to start an open access initiative would be. - Iddo Friedberg

Communities? My Mendeley library contains what looks like hundreds of journals. Of course, I only read and cite a tiny fraction of the articles published in these journals. If you work on something where you only have to read one journal to stay on top of your research, maybe then specialized journals make sense. As soon as you work in a field where relevant papers are published in more journals than you could possible follow (my guess is 90% of all fields), one more journal is one more PITA. If in the current system you think you're not finding your literature, you probably have two problems, both of which can be solved more rationally than by adding journals: 1. you haven't set up your literature searches properly (solution: a combination of eTocs, mailinglists, social bookmarks, PubMed searches, Friendfeed, Google alerts. 2. Your (i.e., our) publishing system is antiquated, fragmented and counterproductive (solution: help pushing for a publishing system that serves your needs rather than supporting a system where you have to bend over backwards to make it work at all). - Björn Brembs

If you want an OA journal on SB, try BMC Structural Biology http://bit.ly/h0eRO - Chris Leonard

Another way to look at communities from a PLoS ONE angle are what they term "Collections" (example: http://bit.ly/16NRVq ) - this can certainly be done for Structural Biology too. Besides, P1 contains quite a bit of novel stuff that would have no problem being published in more established (yet usually toll-access) journals. - Daniel Mietchen

@Iddo - I think the problem is that you are looking for a space for a community to aggregate around. And Bjoern and I would feel that this day and age, the idea of creating another imaginary set of covers to put some material between seems very old fashioned and horribly expensive for relatively little gain. If you saying that Structural Biologists won't submit to OA journals because there isn't one with Structural Biology in the name (putting aside the fact that as Chris points out, there is one) then I think we need to come up with a cheaper way of making it look like there is one. As I say, you will pay hundreds of thousands for the process of setting up this imaginary set of covers. Is it really worth it? I'd rather have another couple of postdocs doing some research. - Cameron Neylon

@Cameron. Not because there is not one with structural biology in their name (JMB doesn't either). Rather, there is no mid-to-high level OA journal that will accept structural biology papers, while there are quite a few closed access ones. P1 is great for ongoing research, but P1 only in your resume won't land you a tenure track position. BMC SB is an option, true, but it is not a first choice one for many people I know. I'm not looking for a place for a community to aggregate around -- I am looking for the equivalent of PLoS-CB in structural biology. This whole thing started form me wondering out loud about OA venues for SB, and then thinking that PLoS might actually benefit from this lacuna in a large field. But your point about investment / gain benefit is probably valid. I admit ignorance as to how this market works. - Iddo Friedberg

"there is no mid-to-high level OA journal... P1 only in your resume won't land you a tenure track position" -- I am confident that this bad and bizarre system of relying on journal reputation as a proxy for research quality is a temporary state of affairs whose end can only be hastened by "mid to high level" researchers deciding to publish in OA journals (Green or Gold) and pushing their tenure committees, if they must have metrics, to use better, finer grained metrics. - Bill Hooker

Bill, while I'm also not sure whether yet another journal is a good idea, I'm also not sure about how "temporary" the current state is. Why ask people to risk their careers? If I would care about my scientific career (which I don't, to be honest), I wouldn't bet on so soon change - I would play safe, because I would be unwise to give away any kind of competitive advantage. I've heard once that history knows very few cases where an organization (a system) was able to change from within. I think it's also true for current scientific system. - Pawel Szczesny

@Iddo I appreciate the issue here. As Bjoern says this has to change because where a paper is really tells you very little about the quality and importance in real terms. It's great that you feel that a PLoS branded journal would have that level of credibility (interesting aside - if it's a question of branding, why not get a group of like minded people together and actively try and pump up BMC Struct Biol over the course of 12-24 months) but if it's about credibility then surely that comes from the people and community, not the journal brand name? We're in a difficult transition period at the moment - so I know a lot of this is easy for me to say, I have tenure after all. - Cameron Neylon

@Pawel but there is the flip side of that. If 90% of people aren't going to make it you have to take some risks. It's a question of choosing which ones you are going to take a punt on. You take risks in terms of which projects you choose, how you pursue them, when you communicate them. Why not with how you communicate them, particularly if it marks you out as different from the crowd? (And yes I know the answer - because appointment committees only want to see certain types of risks being taken...) - Cameron Neylon

I think Cam's got it -- a scientific career is so risky already (maybe 10% of postdocs move up the foodchain now?) that it actually makes more sense to take specific risks aimed at making yourself more competitive. If it doesn't work out, well, you were probably screwed anyway. - Bill Hooker

@Bill there is absolutely no risk of finding a tenure track job if you don't have, as Cameron put it, a few branded publications. I agree that this quality assessment system is somewhat outdated, but there is no sign of it going away. Also, when it comes to promotion reviews, they look at grants. But grant panels like to see branded publications.... and this is definitely not going away anytime soon. - Iddo Friedberg

@Iddo: "no signs of it going away"? Admittedly, it may be wishful thinking, but I do see signs of it going away. I see big-shot scientists not only writing articles in all major journals against the IF stranglehold, but also putting their money where their mouth is and publishing in P1, etc. I think the exponential growth of P1 is the best sign: P1 is set to double in size for the third time this year to become the largest journal on the planet next year. What slows this process down is the attitude: that's the way it is, what can we do, I'm so small I can't change things, we have to accommodate, adjust, take it and live with it. If everyone thought that way, we'd still be ruled by inbred, warmongering kings instead of the incompetent, power-addicted, corrupt morons we now elect :-) - Björn Brembs

Bjoern, if they put money where their mouth is, they would stop reviewing for CNS (cell, nature, science), instead of only stopping publishing there. Without that step the only message that gets through is "I'm so big that is doesn't matter where I publish". Of course the signs are there, but we seem to be quite far from the major goal - change evaluation metric to something that measures impact of an individual paper (and, BTW, for that we don't need a change in scientists attitude, only a change in funding bodies). - Pawel Szczesny

Or rather in the way funding bodies work and fund research - Deepak Singh

@Pawel: You're right of course. I wasn't trying to say that we're already where we need to be! I was only trying to say that not all hope is lost just yet. ... Maybe, ... hopefully :-) - Björn Brembs from iPhone

"I see big-shot scientists not only writing articles in all major journals against the IF stranglehold, but also putting their money where their mouth is and publishing in P1, etc. " -- like Pawel said, because they can. I don't think anyone who has what they consider as C/N/S material would pick P1 as a first choice venue. "I think the exponential growth of P1 is the best sign: P1 is set to double in size for the third time this year to become the largest journal on the planet next year." -- P1 has provided a venue for many articles that otherwise would not have been published. By doing so it filled a serious gap that was needed, esp. in the life sciences of ongoing research reporting and as it specifically does not require novelty in its publications. That is the reason for growth. However, when looking at the record on a scientist, esp. in Life Sciences, for promotion / funding awards then novelty and breakthrough are key, and the journal name is still a strong factor. I maintain that I see no sign of this going away. The positive thing is that *PLoS-Biology* managed to work itself into the system to be an opens access alternative on the "brand name" level of C/N/S. Which brings us back to where this all started: an OA alternative to Structure (for example). BMC-SB papers need be primarily valid and coherent, by editorial criteria. The editorial criteria for structure include "exceptional interest" " These journals have different aims and scopes and BMC-SB is not the OA alternative to Structure. - Iddo Friedberg